Although white Union soldiers were fighting for the freedom of enslaved African Americans, many of the whites in Glory still viewed blacks as slaves as opposed to their counterparts in the Civil War. Within the film, Colonel Montgomery, the Sergeant who trained and prepared black soldiers for war, along with the colonel who was in charge of distributing necessities, served as two men who discriminated the African American soldiers. While teaching the black soldiers how to march, several of the men couldn't tell the difference between left and right. Colonel Montgomery acted as if all blacks were uneducated and unable to grasp the basic functions that were essential to a soldier's success within the Civil War. Drawing parallels to the movie Django Unchained, Django is degraded as a worthless slave by many of the whites within the film. .
There are multiple scenes in Django Unchained where Django is riding into various towns on a horse. It was difficult for white people within the towns to grasp the notion that a black man had the capability of riding a horse on his own. Despite the fact that Django has the ability to speak and read effectively, white people within the film made assumptions about his intelligence based on his skin color. This notion is exemplified in the scene where Django and Schultz enter a room in Calvin Candie's mansion where "Mandingo fighting" is taking place. In this scene, Django finds himself at a bar next to a white southerner. This racist southerner asks Django what is name is, and Django responds accordingly. The white man then proceeds to ask Django to spell his name, questioning Django's intellectual capacity. Django then spells his name for the man clearly and effectively. The white southerner is taken aback by the fact that a former slave had the intellectual capability of both spelling his own name and communicating at the same level as his fellow southern elites.